What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

"I am white, after all..."

...as, indeed, are some of his best friends!

For anybody who hasn't seen it yet, here's the full original text of "An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum" by "anti-racist activist and writer" Tim Wise, who, Wikipedia informs us, "has lectured since 1995 at over 600 college campuses across the US," and "has trained teachers, corporate employees, non-profit organizations and law enforcement officers in methods for addressing and dismantling racism in their institutions":

* * * * *

"For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.

"And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.

"Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this . . .

"You need to drink up.

"And quickly.

"And heavily.

"Because your time is limited.

"Real damned limited.

"So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.

"The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.

"Not much more now.

"Tick, tock.

"Tick, tock.

"Tick.

"Tock.

"I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election—and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise—but you are wrong.

"You have won a small battle in a larger war the meaning of which you do not remotely understand.

"’Cuz there is nothing even slightly original about you.

"There have always been those who wanted to take the country back.

"There were those who, in past years, wanted to take the country back to a time of enslavement and indentured servitude.

"But they lost.

"There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when children could be made to work in mines and factories, when workers had no legal rights to speak of, when the skies in every major city were heavy with industrial soot that would gather on sidewalks and windowsills like volcanic ash.

"But they lost.

"There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when women could not vote, or attend any but a few colleges, or get loans in their own names, or start their own businesses.

"But they lost.

"There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when blacks 'had no rights that the white man was bound to respect,'—this being the official opinion of the Supreme Court before those awful days of judicial activism, now decried by the likes of you—and when people of color could legally be kept from voting solely because of race, or holding certain jobs, or living in certain neighborhoods, or run out of other towns altogether when the sun would go down, or be strung up from trees.

"But they lost.

"And you will lose.

"So make a note of it.

"Tweet it to yourself.

"Put it on your Facebook wall and leave it there so you’ll remember that I told you so.

"It is coming, and soon.

"This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking.

"It is math.

"Not even advanced math. Just simple, basic, like 3rd grade math.

"The kind of math that proves how your kind—mostly older white folks beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like—are dying.

"You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass—even if it takes four sequels to make it happen—but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time.

"Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends.

"Our ankles survive.

"You do not.

"Michael Meyers, Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and that asshole husband in that movie with Julia Roberts who tracks her down after she runs away and changes her identity—they are all done. Even that crazy fucker in Saw is about to be finished off for good. Granted, he’s gonna be popping out in some 3-D shit to scare the kiddies, so he isn’t going quietly. But he’s going, as all bad guys eventually do.

"And in the pantheon of American history, old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

"Fine, keep it up. It doesn’t matter.

"Because you’re on the endangered list.

"And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.

"In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

"There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation”—a bunch whose white members were by and large a gaggle of miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.

"So to hell with you and all who revere you.

"By then, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.

"Nothing, Senõr [sic] Tancredo.

"Nothing, Senõra [sic] Angle, or Senõra [sic] Brewer, or Senõr [sic] Beck.

"Loy [sic] tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.

"And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement—hell you’ve all but done that now—thus guaranteeing that the folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.

"Like I said, this shit is math, baby. And numbers don’t lie.

"Bottom line, this too shall pass.

"So enjoy your tax cuts a while longer.

"Go buy whatever you people buy when your taxes get cut: a new car or two, a bigger house, an island. Whatever.

"Go back to trading your derivatives, engaging in rampant financial speculation that produces nothing of value, that turns the whole world into your personal casino. Whatever.

"Play your hand, and for the love of God play it big. Real big. As in, shoot for the moon big. As in, try to privatize Social Security, and health care, and everything else. Whatever.

"At least that way everyone will be able to see what you’re really about.

"We’ve been trying to tell them, but nothing beats seeing it with your own eyes, so 'Go big or go home,' Bubba.

"'Git ’er Done.'

"'Cowboy up,' or whatever other stupid-ass catch phrase strikes your fancy.

"Just promise you’ll do more than talk this time.

"Please, or as one of your celluloid heroes might put it, 'make my day.'

"Do whatever you gotta do, but remember that those who are the victims of your greed and indifference take the long view.

"They know, but you do not, that justice is not for the sprinters, but rather for the long distance runners who will be hitting their second wind, right about the time that you collapse from exhaustion.

"They are like the tortoise to your hare.

"They are like the San Francisco Giants, to your New York Yankees: a bunch that loses year after year after year, until they finally win.

"You have had this confidence before, remember?

"You thought you had secured your position permanently after the overthrow of reconstruction in the wake of the civil war, after the elimination of the New Deal, after the Reagan revolution, after the Republican electoral victory of 1994. And yet, they who refuse to die are still here.

"Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused, maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know about their victims.

"They have to study you, to pay careful attention, to adjust their body armor accordingly, and to memorize your sleep patterns.

"You, on the other hand, need know nothing whatsoever about them. And this, will surely prove fatal to you in the end. For it means you will not know their resolve. Will not fear it, as you should.

"It means you will take their greatest strength—perseverance—and make of it a weakness, called losing.

"But what you forget, or more to the point never knew, is that those who lose know how to lose, which is to say they know how to lose with dignity.

"And those who suffer know how to suffer, which is to say they know how to survive: a skill that is in short supply amid the likes of you.

"You, who could not survive the thought of minimal health care reform, or financial regulation, or a marginal tax rate equal to that which you paid just 10 years earlier, perhaps are under the illusion that everyone is as weak as you, as soft as you, as akin to petulant children as you are, as unable to cope with the smallest setback, the slightest challenge to the way you think your country should look and feel, and operate.

"But, surprise . . . they are not.

"And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now—we are—your destruction.

"And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes, cuz, see, we don’t have to be. We don’t need guns.

"We just have to be patient.

"And wait for your hearts to stop beating.

"And stop they will.

"And for some of you, real damned soon, truth be told.

"Do you hear it?

"The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

"Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.

"So know this.

"If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember . . .

"Payback, thy name is . . .

"Temporary."

* * * * *

'Gotta love those tildes over the o's, and "Loy tiene!" But, hey - he minored in Latin American Studies at Tulane, so who am I to quibble?

Over at Daily Kos, and Democratic Underground, and Balloon Juice, some of his best friends, no doubt most of them white, squeel with delight.

As usual, Steve Sailer nails the crucial point, here, which is that Tim Wise is not a marginal figure:

"It's important to understand that Tim is neither controversial nor a controversialist. The colleges that pay him his lecture fee view him as a public-spirited citizen, no more controversial than was, say, a doctor in the 1920s who traveled the country lecturing on the dangers of venereal disease...And Tim is not a controversialist. He is no more expected to engage in debate with those he denounces than that VD doctor was expected to debate a spirochete."

More generally, to regard European gentiles, and their American progeny, and the culture they built, with contempt, and even hatred - to see them as "the cancer of human history," and to rejoice in the prospect of their disappearance - is pretty much the conventional wisdom, on the left, these days. And, increasingly, they don't mind saying so openly.

Comments (32)

Well, other than as much as saying right out in front, in large caps, that being white and right is in and of itself racist full stop, (I wonder if being black and right is racist?) I hardly have much to quibble with. Oh, sure, a few tildas off. And a few misalignments of who's going to reverse our 2010 "taking it back" by taking it back themselves eventually: since the ones he is betting on are hispanics who came here (illegally) recently or will in the near future, and therefore never did have the IT that they are taking "back", and never did in any way contribute to the IT that they are taking "back". And the fact that the ultimate "tick tock" game will certainly be won by the Christians, not the anti-Christian, anti-religion, racist liberals who won't much like the Judgment Day. Oh, and besides those, the obvious, stupid, nearsighted head-up-your where the light don't shine stupidity in thinking that the successes the non-whites have had in reversing slavery, discrimination, and other forms of oppression have been achieved without the assistance of white people who saw the problems as exactly that, and that some of these whites were on the right.

Yes, other than these minor mistakes. You could put it this way: As long as idiocy, blindness, and hatred live on in liberal racists, and greed and self-centeredness live on both sides, then the vision he depicts is as certain as can be.

Say, what are white women supposed to feel, when they are told that they have been oppressed (though a majority) and, at the same time, as whites, part of the oppression? Are they supposed to cheer, or be chastened? Is this why women are so conflicted?

"...after the elimination of the New Deal..."

Whhaatt?!!!? Did I fall into a coma and just wake up? When did this happy event happen?

P.S. I love the phrase "straight supremacy" -- I picture a squiggly line complaining about the unfair treatment the straight lines get on the geometery plane.

I don't know if I should laugh or cry when I think about Sailer's comments that this guy is considered mainstream.

Steve,

I just decided I'm going with "laugh": I went to his Wiki page which had a link to his home page where you find stuff like this:

"One of the brilliant voices of our time"

- Molefi Kete Asante

P.S. He also has an essay clarifying his thoughts from the "Open Letter" -- he says he doesn't hate all white people, just the right wing ones!

Tony, the foundation of liberalism is perennial discontent. Whether it is about money, sex, gender, race, etc., the topic is only a focus for the rage, not an ends unto itself. As such, so long as one is struggling against "the man", that person is a member of the liberal tribe. As such, it is totally acceptable for a wealthy, white, male, gentile liberal cheer and applaud verbal excrement like the above, since he's a fellow malcontent. Of course, once such a liberal is no longer useful to "the cause", he is as good as a casualty, but that's just a bothersome detail. And no, liberals do not get the irony, especially wealthy, white, male, gentile ones.

It is amazing to me how much hatred pours forth from this "open letter." Identity politics always reaches for the lowest common denominator and thus always debases political discourse into something far less than a rational discussion about political alternatives. Belief in small, limited government is not racial issue but an issue of economic freedom. Should we have more of it or less of it? Marco Rubio got elected this Tuesday as a conservative Republican promising to reign in D.C. spending. He is obviously not an aging white guy who wants to return to the good ol' days of the '50's.

It's not about race. I am sick and tired of reading leftists paint this as a racial issue. It's not.

Also, what makes the author think that demographic changes ultimately mean the triumph of the Left? Talk about simplistic reductionism.

I wonder how many things I'd have to disagree with him about before he hates this white person?

I mean, what counts as major and what minor to him? If I think Shakespeare is worth preserving or Bach, can I expect a Full Monty jeremiad against me? Or if I say that most Mexican restaurants aren't very good in California, does that get me written out of the will and lose my place in the new multi-culti world order?

Don't you just love it that the world is filled with Accusers and Grand Inquisitors praying for the day of their fun time Auto da Fes? Like Hitler, Mao and Stalin.

My favorite part of this letter is his assumption that "our" side is the one losing population. If anything, the conservative movement is gaining ground relative to the left. (Naturally, given the tendency of the right to be pro-life or, at the very least, anti-abortion. We tend to thus beget and bestow upon this world more children.) Even ignoring that quibbling fact, however...

I am 22. I am of the milennials, who generationally tend to look at the election of Obama as their president. One could call me a white conservative. One could not call my friend Javier "white", nor my friend Sean, who is of Indian descent. They are both, arguably, more conservative--or at least more Republican--than I am.

In regards to the social networking that is perhaps the true gamechanging contribution of my generation, a friend recently posted a Facebook status asking who was voting for what, and specifically called out my state's senatorial race (Rossi v. Murray in Washington). Three of the five respondents, and Maxine herself, were all voting Rossi. All of us are under 25, and I was the only "white" person in the conversation.

The Republicans have known for a while they were losing the youth demographic, so they knew to take it online with the Commitment to America. The political landscape is rapidly changing for the better, and it's swinging right more than left.

He hates this much because his favoured political party didn't do very well in a mid-term election?
In Ulster we used to get speeches like this. But at the time our political communities had substantial armaments, and used them on each other.
Maybe I'm stating the blindingly obvious, but this type of rhetoric isn't puerile - it's dangerous.

Yes, it is dangerous, Graham. My guess too is that Wise, the author of this screed (am I the only one who is reminded by the _form_ of it of the kind of thing teenagers used to write as free verse poetry to make them think themselves profound?) will not be the one actually beating or killing anybody. But his ilk teach the young in the schools, and the young get it. And when they do beat and kill people, more of Wise's ilk will be the defense attorneys, the judges, the juries, the psychiatrists, and the parole boards that will give them slaps on the wrist, make excuses for them, and release them back on the streets on the basis of this sort of thinking.

It turns out that I'd count as a "socialist" in US political parlance. (I was bit shocked to discover this, but I'm learning to live with it!)
But I'm strongly pro-life, believe in traditional sexual morality, and have other conservative moral views. So where do I come in Tim Wise's Weltanschauung? Would I be up for "extinction"?

If someone doesn't fit his cartoonish political categories, what does he do with them?

Unless you join the liberal tribe, you are the enemy.

"As usual, Steve Sailer nails the crucial point, here, which is that Tim Wise is not a marginal figure:"

Of course he is. All sorts of marginal figures speak at colleges and universities as well as appearing on TV programs like Bill Maher's. The difference between my side and your side, Steve, is that your side runs, and too often elects, marginal figures with a wacky public policy agenda to public office.

The difference between my side and your side, Steve, is that your side runs, and too often elects, marginal figures with a wacky public policy agenda to public office.

Obama: a wacky marginal ACORN public figure with a wacky public policy agenda, voted into high public office. Al, you have a very odd sense of humor to lay description at Republicans, or conservatives (which are not co-extensive).

Tony: "Well, other than as much as saying right out in front, in large caps, that being white and right is in and of itself racist full stop, (I wonder if being black and right is racist?) ..."

But, of course it is!

"Obama: a wacky marginal ACORN public figure with a wacky public policy agenda, voted into high public office. Al, you have a very odd sense of humor to lay description at Republicans, or conservatives (which are not co-extensive)."

First, while all conservatives may not be Republicans, for all practical purposes, all Republicans are conservative.

Second, Obama is a center-left Democrat who is well in the mainstream of American politics. That you mention ACORN as significant only shows where you fit on the spectrum.

There is a difference between folks with whom one merely disagrees and those who are clearly suffering from serious moral, mental and intellectual defects. There is, at this time, no comparison on the Democratic side with folks like Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and Joe Miller.

Ilion - glad to see you back. I corrected your comment.

Ummm, Al - as a simple matter of fact, you're wrong.

"...all sorts of marginal figures speak at colleges and universities..."

No, Al, they don't.

Yes Steve they do, unless you are using an appearance at such institutions as automatically conferring non-marginality. Why sometimes they instruct and even achieve tenure. What you are employing here is an old right wing trick. Find someone on the left who is saying something strange and then use that as some sort of standard for the left. Then, demand denunciations. You all go into outrage mode over something like this until you find something else, rinse and repeat.

To conservatives' demands that everyone else on the left denounce Ward Churchill or be accused of standing with him, the typical reply of liberals and leftists was, "who's Ward Churchill and why do I care"?

As even Mr. Wise seems to believe that some of what he wrote was over the top and as he just another American with strong views on one thing or another, a "so what" seems appropriate.

At some point folks will catch on and tire of this manufactured outrage by conservatives but I'll not hold my breath.

As an outsider to the US, and as an outsider to conservatism, I'd say that the outrage is not manufactured, and that this type of political rhetoric is dangerous.

Civility costs very little.

Graham

al, my sweet:

check out Tim Wise's up-coming schedule.

Speech after speech, talk after talk...and all paid for by public &/or corporate money.

I defy you to name his right-wing equivalent.

The sources doesn't indicate if this is public money or derived from student fees but that is besides the point. So far all you've demonstrated is that he has carved out a nice gig for himself. Earning a living doesn't define marginal/non-marginal. We decided long ago to broadly tolerate various opinions. That allowed a market to develop and America has long had folks who make a living (sometimes a very good living) from speechifying and so forth.

http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/talentbooking/Political-Speakers/Conservative-Speakers/0/-1/0/1

There are quite a few conservatives who do quite well at this (Coulter, Medved, Prager, etc.) and the right wing welfare machine is well known. Best sellers by famous non-entities are put on the best seller lists by bulk purchases.

Uncle Tim, in his lucid slip of honesty, just proves Samuel Huntington's adage that most of the multicultists are motivated by hatred of Europeans and those of the European Diaspora. If only others will be as honest!

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and yet that does not stop my stomach from churning hot sick at having to declare this. For the first time ever, I must agree with "al" on one point.

President Obama stands firmly within the very heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Yes, he may be a malignant narcissist, but both sides are full of them. Yes, he participated in the infamous vote fraud and intimidation machine known as ACORN. Yes, he is further to the Left than Jimmy Carter, even on a good day. Yes, his popularity has been crashing like a leaden dirigible ever since people got bored with his one talent. Even so, he is not so much from the fringe as a true believer. Even so, Tim Wise is not part of the fringe either. I've meet the Left's fringe....

Okay, okay, let's backtrack a minute. I will agree that there is a quite surely a way in which Obama's agenda is NOT marginal: it is in the middle of a significant portion of the population, and of the majority of the Democratic party. So far, then, he is in some sense "ordinary".

But that is only an ordinary made up of variable, changeable, movable goal-posts. The political arena as a whole has moved 6/10ths further to the left since, oh, LBJ, to pick a staging point. What was rather outre leftism then is now considered "moderate Republicanism" now. And what Obama spouts today would have been considered flaming, loony-bin liberal 50 years ago. So, on a more objective basis, a basis that does not sway with the movable goal-posts of current mainstream thinking, Obama's agenda is certainly wacky, and is also on the margin: it is the central agenda of a wacko, group on the far, far left margin that has achieved a large following.

First, while all conservatives may not be Republicans, for all practical purposes, all Republicans are conservative.

Don't tell Olympia Snowe, or Arlen Specter, or all the other RINOs in the trough. They would be shocked at the thought and disagree most vehemently.

So, just existing is offensive. Nice to know I can piss people off without lifting a finger. When those other races take over however, and like own businesses and otherwise try to eek out an honest living and have to face a confiscatory, social-engineering monster of a government, and they start voting against it, whose he gonna blame then?

The man is not much more twisted than most liberals, his mistake is to go on and on about it.
With filth like this it's only a matter of time before their revulsion of elections, true dissent, democracy, and yes you better believe it, other humans in general, including their supposed allies black Americans, pushes these beasts into shall we say, acts irrevocable.
Then it will be interesting to see who will mount the barricades, metaphorical or otherwise, for tax increases, government controlled kitchen ware, rationed toilet paper, and the little electric bumper cars we used to drive at Coney Island.
A world where everybody, save them, is miserable.
Just beneath the surface, if that, is Death, the wish, the hope, the passion for it. But will Mr Wise be on those barricades himself? If true to form there will be other dopes to act out his violent venom, a venom life giving to himself only.

We witness liberalism at it's end point, teetering on the brink of it's logical conclusion, a logic always founded in control and a necessary disregard turned to contempt, finally metastasizing to uncontrollable, aimless hate. Power thwarted, sputtering, stumbling towards it's last remaining goal, destruction, however it may be obtained.

If this picture seems far to draconian, much to overdone, ask yourself how long this type of ugly expression, becoming so common, will go on to no effect. But it's purpose is to have effect and those who promulgate it are not very dainty as to the possibilities.

But his ilk teach the young in the schools, and the young get it.

My daughter at Texas A&M, considered a conservative school (it does host the Bush Presidential library) had to do a paper for some class in which Mr. Wise's thought (using the term generously) on racial phenomena was prominently displayed. Though most of this "thought" was gibberish, she knew what she had to write in order to get the desired grade.

Yes, they teach the young, and the young get it - spit back what they want to get the grade, then move on. Basically, a colossal waste of time and resources. How else can you explain the existence of conservatives under 30 despite liberalism's near complete lock on academia for the past two generations?

btw, wacko and mainstream are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

There is, at this time, no comparison on the Democratic side with folks like Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and Joe Miller.

Sure there are. But, with these clowns, it is worse. They are in office. Currently.

Here are five just from The Congressional Black Congress alone:

Maxine Waters
Charlie Rangel
Sanford Bishop
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Hank “The Island will tip over” Johnson

You forgot Sheila "we need hurricanes named after black people or else you're racist" Jackson Lee.

Tim Wise is by no means typical of all liberals in America. I'm no conservative,but I consider him to be politically correct multicultural idiot who does nothing but stereotype,stigmatize and demonize white people and tell left-wingers exactly what they want to hear.
He fans the flames of left-wing extremist resentment and reinforces the dangerous notion of collective guilt for white people.
But right-wing extremists are no better,if not worse,and they do want to take America back-right back to the mores of 17th century Puritan New England!
A plague on both their houses !

I agree with Al. DailyKOS is and always has been ridiculous, and mainstream liberals tend to be somewhat embarrassed by it. This Wise guy has no real power and scant influence, so who cares what he says or how provocative it is?

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.